Yoga comparable to walking for heart health

An international team of researchers say that doing yoga exercises on a regular basis can be as good for your heart health as walking or riding a bike.

In a review of 37 controlled trials involving more than 2,000 participants, researchers from the Harvard University School of Public Health and Erasmus University Medical Center in the Netherlands focused on how yoga could be used to improve cardiovascular health.

The researchers examined how yoga affected risk factors such as body mass index (BMI), systolic blood pressure, low-density lipoprotein cholesterol (LDL), and high-density lipoprotein cholesterol (HDL). The results showed that each of these risk factors improved more in those practicing yoga than in people not exercising and, in fact, that yoga’s impact on cardiovascular risk factors was comparable to more conventional aerobic exercises.

The researchers said that it’s unclear if the health benefits are due to yoga’s impact on stress reduction, which could, in turn, affect metabolic function. Regardless, the results come as good news for people who cannot perform traditional cardiovascular exercises, or for people who prefer an alternative.

More than 3,000 tanning bed injuries a year in U.S.

Tanning beds continue to take their toll, particularly on young women. More than 3,000 people a year end up hospital emergency rooms as a result of injuries suffered as a result of indoor tanning.

While more attention is given to the increased risk of developing skin cancer from using tanning beds, other injuries, such as skin burns, eye injuries and fainting result in people going to the hospital, according to a new report from the Centers for Disease Control (CDC).

To conduct their study, CDC researchers analyzed data on injuries related to indoor tanning from 2003 to 2012. They found that about 3,200 indoor-tanning-related injuries, on average, were treated each year in U.S. hospitals. The majority of those treated for injuries were young, white women and about 80 percent of the injured people suffered skin burns. About 10 percent were taken to the hospital because they had passed out, and nearly 6 percent had suffered eye injuries.

The good news is that the researchers also found that the number of yearly injuries did decrease during the study period, from about 6,500 in 2003 to roughly 2,000 in 2012.

Too much salt tied to headaches

There may be a link between a diet high in sodium and headaches. So concludes a new study by scientists at the Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

While previous studies have linked high blood pressure to headaches, little research has been done on a possible connection between headaches and diet.

The researchers randomly assigned 390 study participants to follow either the Dietary Approaches to Stop Hypertension (DASH) diet, which is rich in fruits, vegetables and low-fat dairy products with reduced saturated and total fat, or to eat a control diet reflecting typical Western meals with high sodium intake.

The results showed that people who ate foods high in sodium had one third more headaches than those who ate foods low in sodium. The researchers observed that this difference remained whether the volunteers ate the standard Western diet or the DASH diet. So, as the researchers pointed out, simply eating a diet rich in fruits, vegetables and potassium and low in saturated fat won’t necessarily ease or prevent headaches if a person’s sodium intake remains high.

According to the American Heart Association, people in the U.S., on average, consume about 3,400 mg of sodium a day, more than twice the recommended amount of 1,500 mg.

Shift workers sicker and heavier

More research has found that shift workers tend to have an increased risk of obesity and other health complications, when compared with the general population.

The findings were published in a report by the Health and Social Information Centre, called the Health Survey for England. It compared data on men and women of working age who either worked regularly between the hours of 7 a.m. and 5 p.m. with that of men and women who worked in shifts that involved being on the job outside those conventional work hours.

The data showed that about 30 percent of the shift workers were obese, compared with about 24 percent of those working regular hours. About 40 to 45 percent of shift workers were found to have back pain, diabetes or chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, compared with about 36 to 39 percent of the rest of the study’s participants.

The report also found it noteworthy that these negative health effects are occuring despite the fact that a high percentage of shift workers are younger adults, between the ages of 16 and 24. The scientists said that they expected fewer health complications for that reason. The scisentists also expressed concern that the number of people doing shift work seems to be increasing.

Why shift workers seem to have more health complications than the general population is still not clear. However, experts said that the disrupted asleep associated with shift work may affect the body’s normal rhythms, which may lead to various diseases. They added that eating late at night or taking up smoking may also contribute to obesity, diabetes and other health problems.